New Leaks, Are They Snowden's?

In the Sunday New York Times, Scott Shane put together some new information about what and where NSA was collecting intelligence about these things:

1.  Information about positions of the U.N. secretary general, prior to a meeting with our President.

2.  Interception of 478 e-mails which helped to foil a plan by jihadists to kill a Swedish artist.

3.  Surveillance information about  FARC rebels later turned over to over to the Colombian government.

4.  Surveillance of Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, aircraft entering and leaving the airspace around him, his vehicles, weapons, and conversations of aides, down to the details of what was discussed.

5.  Surveillance of Somali officials, a U.N. political officer communicating by e-mail, and a local rep from a charity World Vision.

(See: No Morsel Too Minuscule For All-Consuming N.S.A., New York Times, Nov 3, 2013)

The sources of most of these examples are said to be documents that came from Edward Snowden.  I watch for these documents, because they are sensitive intelligence matters that should not appear in public and they damage our national security.  I haven't seen that many, and I am starting to get the idea that the New York Times, the Guardian, and the Washington Post can write a ton of articles based on their own sources, and say they came from Snowden's stash of documents.  We wouldn't have any way of knowing the truth of it, anymore than we would know the truth of the source of the examples they are using.  Nobody in the government will acknowledge the truth of any of them, even when they appear in the public media.  Nobody can challenge the voracity of the newspapers' statements, nor question whether they really came from Snowden.

The inference in this article is that NSA collects, analyzes and distributes intelligence about almost every aspect of any persons life, anywhere in the world.  There would have never been an attack on 9/11, Somali pirates would never capture a ship on the open seas, the FARC would not exist as an organization, and Iran would not have a nuclear program, to speak of, if it were really true that NSA could sweep up everything, and use it to make predictions about what was going to happen anywhere, anytime.

That doesn't stop the press from bringing phony "charges" of NSA's abuses of their sanctioned mission.    What this does is undermine our intelligence collection capability, to the benefit of the Russians and Chinese who are the only other countries that can come close to us in that regard.  Does anyone think that Snowden picked Hong Kong at random, as the jumping off point for his escapades?  Do we think he sought asylum in Russia because he "just happened to be at the airport in Moscow"?  Both countries benefit from these disclosures.  What we need to find out, and the White House certainly could if they wanted, is where is this information the press is publishing really coming from?  I doubt that is just Snowden's documents.  It is an easy way to protect other sources by saying so, and we should try to find out who those sources really are.

Merkel's Cell Phone

David Sanger, as some of you know, is one of my favorite reporters because he has some of the best sources in Washington.  I always wonder where he gets some of his ideas, especially those on our most sensitive subjects like the Stuxnet Worm deployment in Iran's closely controlled nuclear facilities.

I saw David on TV a couple of nights ago, and he was asked about the U.S. monitoring of calls made by Angela Merkel, Germany's Chancellor.  He asked more questions than he answered, but his first one made me think:  What head of state does not have an encrypted cell phone to use for communications?  Why didn't she have one?

I'm not sure when Heads of State became so careless with information we should know is being monitored.  The Chinese are building a raft of small satellites they sell to anyone interested in having one.  They can put anything they want on one of these things, so a small country can get into the business of listening in to their neighbors and enemies.  Are we so naive as to think the U.S. is monitoring everyone in the world, but nobody else can?  The Russians were doing it many years ago, and it would be hard to believe they stopped.  The Chinese have hacked every major business in the free world, and nobody has made as big a fuss as our allies have over cell phone monitoring.

An insecure cell phone is an open invitation to anyone with even a glimmer of capability to listen in.  The French even admit they spy on everyone, though they seem to be indignant about being monitored themselves.  On the Continent, there seems to be a mass of hypocrites, lined up, to say how terrible such a thing can be.

They seem to still believe the words of Henry Stimson, "Gentlemen don't read each other's mail."  What we forget is, he used those words to shut down the U.S. code breaking capability for many years, the same capability that was used to break the Japanese codes during WW II.

For those who are squealing the loudest, we might remember another quote of Stimson:  The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust.  There is a little of that on both sides right now.  

White House Leak Investigations

We used to have a saying about the Washington Post and secrets:  "Don't let us see this on the front Page of the Post."  In general, it was intended as a warning about whether a person could be employed after something appeared there.  Usually, that answer was no.  On the front page of today's Post are two examples of what we should see as career-ending disclosures of information.

I have always thought the White House could run a leak investigation when they wanted to, and there is proof positive on the front page today.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/stung-by-a-twitter-renegade-group-in-obama-administration-launched-sting-of-its-own/2013/10/23/3cb89d56-3c00-11e3-b6a9-da62c264f40e_story.html?tid=pm_pop  One of their own, a member of the National Security Council staff, was using an anonymous Twitter account to disparage White House officials and policies.  They did what anyone should do when information leaks, they started a leak investigation and planted information with internal employees to see which pieces of it appeared in the press.  This is not novel or unique - anyone should know how to do it.  The found the person they were looking for, and by all indications, he will be unemployed.

At the same time, the lead story in the Post today is a more gripping tale of Top Secret agreements between Pakistan and the United States over how and where drone strikes are to be conducted.   http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/top-pakistani-leaders-secretly-backed-cia-drone-campaign-secret-documents-show/2013/10/23/15e6b0d8-3beb-11e3-b6a9-da62c264f40e_story.html?tid=ts_carousel

Now, how is it that the White House can run a fairly mature leak investigation when it involves slams to their own people and those right on their door step, but the can't find out who is leaking Top Secret documents to the people just down the street from them?  We have yet to see who actually leaked the information about the new type of underwear bomb plucked out of an Al Qaeda bomb factory, who gave the information to the Times about the Stuxnet worm, or who was behind this latest disclosure about Pakistan and arrangements we had with them on drone strikes.  Can anyone at that end of the street keep a secret?  Sometimes.